1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automated meter reading, and more particularly to a meter reader including a sensor for sensing only a least significant incremental output in usage included in a meter display portion.
2. Discussion of the Background
Modem households are powered by electricity, gas and water, etc. The household receives electricity from the electrical company, in many cases a public utility. Similarly, natural gas is supplied by a gas provider, and water is supplied by the water commission.
The consumption of electricity, gas and water is measured by meters which have been installed at the customer's house. For example, the electricity meter measures the amount of electricity (i.e., power) used by the household and the consumption of electric power is indicated by readings on the meter. The electrical meter typically includes a number of dials which show the power consumption in Kilowatt hours. To bill the customer, it is necessary for the electrical utility to obtain a power consumption reading from the meter. Therefore, before the electrical utility can issue bills to its customers, the electrical meters at each house must be manually read. This represents a significant expenditure of manual effort. The situation is further exacerbated by the inaccessibility of some meters, e.g., located inside the basement of a house, and the unavailability for reading during normal working hours when the occupants of the house are not at home, but are at work.
To contain costs and enhance a competitive position in the utility market place, many utility companies are investigating and implementing automated meter reading capabilities. For example, background automated meter reading solutions sense the current consumption by physically coupling a sensing device to the rotation of the display dials, magnetically coupling the sensing device to the meter, or electrically coupling the sensing device to an LCD or other type of display.
However, in all of these cases, the sensing device must be physically placed within the electrical meter housing (i.e., under the glass covering). This requires an extremely labor-intensive process of retrofitting the meters. This retrofitting process also has a potential of damaging the meter.
Further, other background meter reading devices capture an image corresponding to the entire meter display portion (i.e., all display dials) and transmit this entire image for processing. This increases the battery consumption used by the meter reader and requires complicated circuitry.
In addition, the background devices only fit one particular type of meter and therefore several different types of meter readers are required. Thus, the background meter reading devices are generally expensive to implement, maintain and repair.